Saturday, November 17, 2007

Nigella Lawson's Cheesy Feet

One of the first posts on Nami-nami back in July 2005 was about feet-shaped cheesy cookies, sprinkled with caraway, poppy or sesame seeds. The idea was derived from gorgeous Nigella's beautiful book Feast: Food That Celebrates Life. Back then I nicked Nigella's idea, traced down feet-shaped cookie cutters, but used one of my favourite cheese cookie recipes instead of Nigella's recipe. I thought it's time to use my feet-shaped cookie cutters again, and finally test Nigella's original cheesy feet, sorry, cheese cookie recipe.

I must admit I prefer my old and trusty cheese cookie recipe, especially the caraway-sprinkled version. But Nigella's recipe yields lovely, crumbly cheese cookies that would be a great nibble, whether feet-shaped or not.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 6/200C.Place all ingredients into a food processor and blitz until comes together. (If you haven't got a food processor, then mix gtated cheese, soft butter chunks, flour and baking powder in a bowl and work between your fingers until combined). Form a flat disc, wrap in a clingfilm and let it rest in the fridge for 15 minutes.Roll the rested dough on a floury surface to about 3 mm in thickness, and cut out your feet with feet-shaped cookie cutters (I used my 3 cm long cookie cutter). You can keep re-rolling this dough and cutting out feet until it is all used up.Put them on a lined baking sheet and cook in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, until slightly golden on edges (NB! Overcooked cheese cookies taste nasty and bitter, so take them out of the oven when still light golden).Transfer the cookies to a metal rack and allow to cool.

These look like something you could use on Christmas morning to convince young members of the family that Santa Claus has indeed visited their house :) I don't have a foot-shaped cookie cutter but you have reminded me that I want to make my mom's cheese straw recipe this Christmas - thanks!